News Feature in 2003

Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into US biodefence research. You might expect scientists working on infectious diseases to be unequivocally delighted. But things aren't that simple, says Erika Check.

Can an adult human cell be turned back to an embryonic state without the need for cloning? If so, ethical objections to personalized regenerative medicine would be swept away. Carina Dennis reports.

A new ship and a wave of funding will let scientists drill where they have never been able to drill before, from near the North Pole to the rocks lying beneath Earth's crust. Rex Dalton and David Cyranoski report.

With fish farming on the rise, researchers are seeking ways to make aquaculture more sustainable. One solution may mean turning carnivorous fish into vegetarians. Kendall Powell gets a taste of the future.

After 40 years in development, and some $650 million of NASA funds, Gravity Probe B is almost ready to launch. Would Einstein, whose theories it is about to test, have approved? Tony Reichhardt reports.

In the highly competitive world of cell and molecular biology, there are no prizes for coming second. But is the pressure to be the first to publish 'hot' results distorting scientific progress? Helen Pearson investigates.

African activists, backed by wealthy supporters in the United States and Europe, are locked in combat over the merits of transgenic crops. Ehsan Masood tracks the people, the politics and the cash behind the campaigns.

Don Catlin's lab has struck a major blow against drug abuse in athletics, by developing a test for a shadowy 'designer steroid'. Jonathan Knight visits the scientists who are striving to keep sport clean.

Growing numbers of amateurs are getting serious about astronomy. The professionals applaud their enthusiasm and success in collecting data and building telescopes — as long as they don't start competing with them for funding. Geoff Brumfiel joins the graveyard shift.

Deep-diving submarines have opened a new window onto the ocean's gelatinous inhabitants. And biologists are discovering that these denizens of the deep have a few surprises in store. Carina Dennis dives in.

The early days of genomics were marked by concerns that wide-ranging gene patents would restrict research and medical discovery. So far, proteomics hasn't toiled under the same cloud. But don't get complacent, warns David Cyranoski.

Vast quantities of nitrogen being poured onto farmers' fields are wreaking havoc with our forests. Nicola Nosengo investigates.

More and more people's working and social lives are blighted by skewed sleep patterns. Is it time for the medical mainstream to take notice of what neuroscientists are learning about the body clock? Alison Abbott reports.

Truly 'personalized' medicine remains a distant goal. But researchers are now thinking about how to use genomic data to avoid prescribing drugs that may kill, or won't work. Alison Abbott reports.

A new effort to map human genetic variation should provide a shortcut for researchers trying to uncover the roots of disease. Carina Dennis profiles the 'HapMap' project.

Today, just four countries account for 99% of the world's commercially grown transgenic crops. But that is all changing: policies are being thrashed out, laws drawn up and seeds sown. We present an interactive graphic showing how GM is taking root.

In some countries, transgenic plants are already a part of mainstream farming. Will the rest of the world soon follow suit?

It's crunch time for agribiotech in Britain, as politicians rule on the planting of commercial transgenic crops. The world is watching, says Jim Giles.

A new biology journal, positioned to compete with the likes of Nature, Science and Cell, aims to reinvent the economics of high-quality scientific publishing. Declan Butler examines the bottom line.

One grain of sand is a solid. But a lot of grains together can behave like a solid or a liquid. By probing this dual personality, physicists hope to understand a host of real-world systems, says Mark Buchanan.